For NL Architects’ latest project they created a “moving forest” in Amsterdam:

The Moving Forest are 100 trees strapped into 100 shopping-carts lurking around in an urban environment blocking peoples way and forcing passers to act on them. According to NL’s Gen Yamamoto the idea comes from a story he heard as a child about a forest where the trees move at night so that people would loose there way and could never get out.

After the period of 6 weeks when the festival is over, the trees will be sold on to citizens and find a new home.

I was interested in the concept of automating aspects of society that were considered not so “glamorous”. Robotics are often used in environments which are considered dangerous to humans. Deep sea exploration, nuclear cleanup and volcanism are some of the “higher profile” adverse environments which robots are used. My question was, “What about other dangerous or hazardous areas?”. For example, homeless people live in extremely dangerous environments. Shouldn’t there be automated equipment used by this strata of society? So, for this project I chose to implement an automated walking, homeless shopping cart.

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About

Urban Prankster covers pranks, hacks, participatory art, and other creative endeavors that take place in public places in cities across the world. It is edited by Charlie Todd.
This blog was updated from 2008 to 2011. It was retired because in that time I realized I wasn't interested in being a blogger and that it was taking time away from my primary focus, creating.